The Price of Silence (book)

The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities

Cover, first edition
Author William D. Cohan
Country United States
Language English
Subject Criminal investigation
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Scribner
Publication date
 April 8, 2014 (2014-04-08)
Media type Print (hardback)
Pages 673 pp.
ISBN 978-1451681796
Preceded by Money and Power

The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities is a nonfiction book about the Duke lacrosse case by William D. Cohan. It was published on April 8, 2014, by Scribner.[1]

Summary

The Price of Silence is a new account of the 2006 Duke lacrosse case scandal that details the pressures faced by America's elite colleges and universities and pulls back the curtain on the larger issues of sexual misconduct, underage drinking, and bad-boy behavior—all too prevalent on campuses across the country.

The 2006 Duke lacrosse case was front-page news nationwide. Cohan feels that the true story of the alleged team rape case was never been told in its entirety and was more complex than all the reportage would indicate. The Price of Silence elaborated on what happened when the most combustible forces in American culture—unbridled ambition, intellectual elitism, athletic prowess, aggressive sexual behavior, racial bias, and absolute prosecutorial authority collided and then exploded on a powerful university campus, in the justice system, and in the media.[2]

Controversy

There have been positive reviews of the book,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] as well as mixed reviews,[11][12] and negative reviews,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19] and negative blog posts highly critical of the book and Cohan's public appearances promoting it.[20][21][22] This disparity in the tone of the reviews has been reflected in the online comment section for the book on Amazon.com.[23][24] A "book swarming"[25] theory has been proposed by Cohan in a blog post on The Huffington Post but refuted in many of the accompanying comments.[26]

Cohan has also been criticized for not providing endnotes of definitively sourced material, or a list of interview subjects.[16][17] Cohan has justified this omission in the "A note on sources" section of the book: "In an era when digital access to documents of all stripes is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, the idea of providing page after page of notes on the sources of my research—as I did in my previous three books—seems somewhat superfluous, especially when writing about events that started to unfold primarily in 2006 ... Throughout the narrative, my reliance on these articles and blogs is indicated clearly, and the vast majority of them are easily accessible to anyone online, often at little or no cost." (p. 619).

Two other issues that were discussed in detail by people who had a negative view of the book were Cohan's giving Mike Nifong long stretches to present rambling, factually-bereft defenses of his conduct and revisionist views of the case, and the fact that numerous allegations by Cohan were A) not supported with any hard facts and B) refuted by principals in the case who publicly stated that Cohan never spoke them and had fabricated his stories. In the most visible example of this, Cohan stated in his book that Governor Roy Cooper had acted against the wishes of North Carolina investigators when he dropped all charges against the Duke lacrosse players, but the investigators stated that Cooper's decision was completely correct and that Cohan's views were fiction.

Publication history

Explanation of the book's title

The "price" in the book's title refers to the alleged $60 million that Duke University paid to the three accused lacrosse players ($20 million each) with confidential terms and apparent silence provisions.[3] The sum of money has been disputed to be actually about ⅓ that total ($18 million).[17][27]

Cohan has said several times in public interviews: "That's a lot of money for a party. They bought a lot of silence with that 100 million dollars."[5]

References

  1. ↑ "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities". Scribner. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  2. ↑ Cohan interview
  3. 1 2 Flanagan, Caitlin (24 April 2014). "Nothing to Cheer About". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  4. ↑ Shribman, David B. (11 April 2014). "Book Review: 'The Price of Silence' by William D. Cohan". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  5. 1 2 Vinton, Nathaniel (April 5, 2014). "New book on Duke lacrosse scandal of 2006 digs up new details on case that cost prestigious university $100 million". Daily News (New York). Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  6. ↑ Long, Karen R. (April 18, 2014). "Duke lacrosse scandal revisited in 'The Price of Silence'". Newsday. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  7. ↑ Dent, Mark (April 26, 2014). "Book review 'The Price of Silence': The Duke lacrosse scandal and the games people play". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  8. ↑ "University sport in America: Power of the punch". The Economist. Apr 12, 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  9. ↑ Tett, Gillian (April 11, 2014). "Notes on a college scandal". FT Magazine. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  10. ↑ Miller, Laura (Apr 6, 2014). "The Duke lacrosse rape scandal: The definitive account". Salon. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  11. ↑ Anderson, Nick (18 April 2014). "'The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal' by William D. Cohan". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  12. ↑ Meadows, Susannah (April 6, 2014). "Telling Victim From Villain at Duke: The Price of Silence Replays a Wrenching Campus Episode". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  13. ↑ Rabinowitz, Dorothy (18 May 2014). "A Dishonest Rewrite of the Duke Lacrosse Case: On an author's publicity tour, he's even more explicit in trying to taint the students who were falsely accused.". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  14. ↑ Taylor, Stuart (15 April 2014. Stuart Taylor, Jr.). "The Many Ways in Which The New Book About The Duke Lacrosse Case Is Wrong.". The New Republic. Retrieved 20 May 2014. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ↑ Neff, Joseph (19 April 2014). "Book review: 'The Price of Silence' only tells one side of Duke lacrosse scandal". Raleigh News & Observer. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  16. 1 2 Johnson, KC (1 May 2014). "The Hazards of Duke". Commentary. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  17. 1 2 3 Johnson, KC; Taylor, Jr., Stuart (2 May 2014). "How the Media Again Failed on the Duke Lacrosse Story". Real Clear Politics. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  18. ↑ Berkowitz, Peter (April 17, 2014). "The DA, Duke Lacrosse and Higher-Ed Hypocrisy". Real Clear Politics. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  19. ↑ Deusner, Stephen M. (May 7, 2014). "An exhaustive, exhausting investigation of the Duke lacrosse scandal". Indy Week. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  20. ↑ Johnson, KC. "Durham-in-Wonderland. Comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case.". Retrieved 20 May 2014. KC Johnson. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  21. ↑ Parker, Hershel (April 19, 2014. Hershel Parker). "Cohan's "The Price Of Silence" & The Main-Stream [sic] Media Which Has Learned Nothing Since 2006: A Book That Should Never Have Been Published". Retrieved 26 May 2014. Check date values in: |date= (help) Title is [sic].
  22. ↑ Balko, Radley. "The attempted rehabilitation of Mike Nifong". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
  23. ↑ "Customer Reviews- The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities". Amazon.com. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  24. ↑ Parker, Hershel. "Mark Wylie's Magnificent Amazon Condemnation of William D. Cohan's THE PRICE OF SILENCE". http://fragmentsfromawritingdesk.blogspot.com. Retrieved 11 June 2014. External link in |website= (help)
  25. ↑ Streitfeld, David. "Swarming a Book Online". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  26. ↑ Cohan, William D. "How Much Freedom of Speech is Too Much?". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  27. ↑ Reeves, Bernie (July 2007). "Shame on Duke". Metro News. Retrieved 28 May 2014.

Further reading

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